MAILANDER’S MUSINGS - In a surprise move suggestive of further capitulation to developer interests, the Sunland-Tujunga Alliance has bought off on Councilman Paul Krekorian's and the City's hopes to revisit the Foothill Boulevard Corridor Specific Plan.
Last week, courting more favor from the Council office, the organization sent a letter [link] to Krekorian's office assuring Krekorian the group supports re-opening the Specific Plan.
Their approving letter to Krekorian also stated that "[A]mending our Specific Plan is not meant to open the Specific Plan to changes that would undermine the underlying purposes and goals of the Specific Plan which are proposed to be left "as is" in the updated Specific Plan."
But a land use analyst told me last night that once a Specific Plan is opened for amending, it may end up being amended in ways that were unintended at the beginning of the process.
"This looks like a way for Dick Platkin to make some money," another source in the Sunland Tujunga community told me. "I can't see any community upside to opening a Specific Plan. You can bet the City and the developers who own it are just licking their chops at the prospects of an opened Specific Plan for our commercial corridor."
The Sunland Tujunga Alliance, once ground zero of the City's anti-density advocacy, has also been unusually quiet about a pending 64-unit inclusionary zoning project on Samoa, which I discussed in my profile of Krekorian in April.
The Sunland - Tujunga Neighborhood Council Land Use Committee met last night at North Valley City Hall.
(Joseph Mailander is a writer and an observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He blogs at street-hassle.blogspot.com where this column first appeared.) –cw
Tags:
CityWatch
Vol 9 Issue 49
Pub: June 21, 2011
